


And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again

by Splat_Dragon



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Major Spoilers, Original Character(s), Post-Time Travel, She's already lived through the first time travel and is back in her time, Side Character - Freeform, There and Back Again, Time Loop, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, kind of, original character deaths, semi-novelization, then ends up going back again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23551951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splat_Dragon/pseuds/Splat_Dragon
Summary: She'd died on that mountain. She'd swear of it, over and over, until she was blue in the face. And yet, somehow, she'd woken up in her bed, as though she'd never ended up back in her favorite video game, never tried, and failed, to fix everything. And she's got scars, plenty of them. Just because they aren't all visible doesn't mean she doesn't have to hide them--though her family cares, telling them she'd spent nearly a year in her favorite video game? Yeah, that'd get her a one-way trip to an institution. But maybe she can try again and, this time, not alone.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	1. The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five; But I am still alive

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this is, in fact, a self-insert, although I've given her a different name and I'm writing her very different from myself, as well as the other original characters! I was intending on putting this off for a while however, unfortunately, my papa, who the grandfather character was loosely based off of, recently passed away, and so this is being written in tribute to him. I hope you all enjoy!

###  _The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five; But I am still alive_  
~Highwayman, The Highwaymen

She’d died on that mountain.

She’d tell you that here, and she’d tell you that now.

She remembered the gleam of the gun as it was aimed at her, the ringing of her ears as voices rose and fell, before it fired at her, pain punching through her gut. Remembered fleeing, a brother in all-but blood urging her to _“keep pushing, please!”_ and pushing her other brother all the same, his breathing gurgling just as awful as hers though he was unharmed as they fled deeper into the cave, fighting for each breath as he shoved her up the ladder, pain paralyzing her when she tried to stretch up to grab the rungs.

Remembered her mare collapsing beneath her, moaning and twisting as her life-blood spilled out onto the dirt, the both of them trying and failing to get to their feet. Remembered her brothers trying to get her to stand, but she’d been _so weak_ , been in so much pain, her head swimming, wanting to tell them to go on without her, but when she’d tried blood had spilled from her mouth and left her even weaker.

Remembered the world fading away as they fled, had been sure the last thing she’d ever see was their boots as they bolted up the mountain, leaving her to die as horse hooves beat at the edge of her tinny hearing.

  
  


And then she’d woken up.

Started awake, coughing and gasping, drawing the breath she’d been denied on that mountain, only barely able to hear someone rush out of her room as she drew her bearings, and found herself more confused than she had been in a very long time.

The bed beneath her was plush, more plush than she’d laid on in a very long time, even more soft and luxurious than that of the bed she’d splurged for in Saint Denis. The walls were white, but not yellowed as so many were, stained from years and years of nicotine tar, and it had taken her a moment to realize that those weren’t strange paintings but _posters_ , posters of shows she hadn’t seen in months, or had it been a year? shows that had been a century away from being made last she remembered, too-bright animals that Albert would have sobbed to have any chance of his photographs turning out like, and it was _too damn bright_ so she closed her eyes again.

And it was _cold_. Not in the way Colter had been, and she was damned glad for it. She’d give anything to never be that cold again, so cold she’d feared her blood would turn to slush in her veins, freeze and stop her heart from ever beating again. But cold in a nice way, as the Overlook had been when a nice breeze swept through, and though her heart still bashed against her ribs, thrumming in leaps and bounds, she allowed herself to enjoy it, trying to figure out where she was before opening her eyes again.

  
  


No, that wasn’t quite true. Because she _knew_ where she was.

But it wasn’t possible.

She’d fallen asleep here almost a year ago, and woken up in a whole different world. Had never thought she’d find herself back.

And she had _died_. Had felt her life-blood leave her, seen it stain the grass.

But she knew her bedroom when she saw it, had only ever had the one for as long as she could remember. And there were her posters, she’d seen them, ones she’d gotten pre-ordering those games she’d played in all that spare time she’d had. Those white walls she’d always wanted to paint but never been allowed to. The blankets beneath her, smooth and soft in the way that only something factory made could be.

But she had _died_ , she’d swear it up and down. And there was no way any of it was a dream. Months had passed, days and nights and weeks and seasons. She’d suffered pains unlike any she could have ever imagined. That was no dream.

Yet here she laid, staring up at her ceiling, as though she’d never woken up in that long-grass field.


	2. But I am still around, I'll always be around and around and around and

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://i.postimg.cc/sfKXFBKR/wp-content-uploads-2015-03-cowboys-jeans-1890-jpg-full-fit-in-950x534.jpg) is the jeans I referenced for the ones she's thinking of! They're from 1890 and I'd 100% wear them, aren't they cool?

###  _But I am still around, I'll always be around and around and around and_  
~Highwayman, The Highwaymen

She almost convinced herself she had dreamed it.

She drifted in that strange world between awake and asleep, feeling soft, soft cotton beneath her and scratchy furs in turn, warm air and cool breezes and air conditioning, loud voices and drunken singing suddenly cutting out for near silence, far off car engines.

But there was no way she had dreamt it all, surely? All the pain, all the love? The people she had, eventually, called family, even knowing how things would end, when she hadn’t been able to change their fates? Her friends, the people she’d helped and killed and robbed? Surely… surely not.

How, though, was she back in her bed?

  
  


She opened her eyes, stared up at the popcorn ceiling. At the little spikes sticking out, knowing it would be rough, wondered if her palms would be as calloused and tough to the touch as they’d been only hours before—had it been hours? Or only moments? It felt as though she’d been awake for only moments, and yet she’d swear she’d been laying there for hours, for near a day.

Her thumb stroked over her palm, felt skin smooth as those folk who’d not known work a day in their lives, the people she’d grown to despise in Saint Denis, despite once having been one of them. A sound that she’d never admit was a sob tore from her throat, eyes burning suspiciously. Everything… everything she’d done was a dream? Was useless, was gone? Was pointless, wiped away the moment she’d opened her eyes? Those relationships she’d made, the people she’d helped and saved?

How stupid, she thought, to be crying over people in a dream. 

And, even as she thought that, she wondered how it could be possible to be changed such by little more than a dream.

  
  


But it wasn’t a dream.

She stood in front of her mirror, her teeth clenched because she knew if she opened her mouth she’d laugh and laugh and laugh and never be able to stop. A brown shirt dangled from a limp hand, and some part of her knew she would have picked a different shirt forever ago (although how long had it been? How much time had passed while she was away, while she was fighting and stealing and _killing_ , how much time had passed while she had failed to save her ~~family~~ gang?), one with a design on it, some tv show or video game, but she’d grown used to plain clothing and had grabbed a solid shirt out of habit.

The shirt dropped to the ground as she reached up to her shoulder, tracing along the scar, the raised tissue where she’d been bitten by a cougar. Nearly killed when she’d been stupid, hadn’t listened to Flicka, been thrown and mauled half to death. If it weren’t for Arthur, she would have died.

A near perfect imprint of the cougar’s teeth, she traced her fingers along it, knowing from all the times she’d seen it that there would be sixteen indents on the front, thirteen on the back—the cat had been missing a tooth. But there were only eight, the mark ended abruptly at her collarbone, right where her shirt would stop being able to hide it.

“Huh,” she muttered quietly. _‘That’s… kind of weird.’_

She realized, perhaps a bit too late, and why she hadn’t realized before she didn’t know, that she still had most of her scars. _Most_ being the keyword. There, on her stomach, the scarred gashes where a Murfree had pinned her and slashed her near-open, and the various dents and craters where she’d been shot and healed ~~she refused to look at the crater under her breasts~~ and the deep scars between her breasts where she’d been whacked by a bear. 

She was certain, if she looked at her leg, she’d find the missing chunk of flesh where she’d been shot, and on the bottom of her foot the pin-prick scars where she’d stepped on a cactus.

But it was the scars she _didn’t_ have that caught her eye.

Her face was completely unblemished, aside from the ones she’d had Before. Acne scars and scars from misadventures when she was younger but, her fingers slid over her chin, not the gash where her face had been slammed into the ground, hit a rock, on her cheek where she’d been gashed by a knife, on her forehead where she’d been thrown against a tree.

Abruptly, she realized, she only had the scars that would be hidden by her clothing.

_‘I don’t understand.’_

  
  


She dressed numbly, grabbing the first things she found. It was her jeans that broke her out of it, leaving her laughing near hysterically—they were almost exactly the same as the jeans she’d worn Back Then, aside from the zipper, Back Then her jeans had had two buttons in its place, and two buttons along the belt line, too. But ignoring that, she could have been wearing the exact same pair.

Really, she didn’t need a belt, but after almost half a year of wearing one, it had become embedded in her morning habits so she put hers on anyway.

And she had to remember _not_ to pull her hair back, that wasn’t something she did often Before but had become a habit Back Then, when her long hair often got in the way while riding or shooting or doing, well, anything really, and it was quickly becoming _incredibly_ irritating but her family would comment on it and she didn’t care to try and think of an answer.

Her family, she would know, was very nosy.

...toilets, though, were something she had _dearly_ missed.


	3. When I reach the other side

###  _When I reach the other side_  
~Highwayman, The Highwaymen

Her family was sitting around the dinner table.

They didn’t usually eat at the dinner table.

Why were they sitting at the dinner table?

Was she dreaming?

She pinched her arm.

_Ow._

Huh. That was pathetic. Still. No, not dreaming.

“Morning Jen!” her grandma chimed, stirring the pan she was cooking in. Oh, pan. Weird.

Dully, she was aware she was in shock. Her palms were damp, and her pulse was whooshing in her ears.

She was so used to eating ‘stew’ for breakfast, if Pearson’s cooking could be called stew. Offal and oatcakes and whatever else she could dig up in the end, once he’d bailed with the girls. _‘Good for him.’_

She missed him.

Missed all of them.

_‘Don’t think about it.’_

“Morning Nan.”

Sit down at the table.

Accept a plate.

Not a bowl.

“Sleep well?"

Answer Papa.

Don’t call him sir.

“Yeah, had a weird dream.”

Don’t stare at Mom. She’s on her phone - it’s been forever since she's been on her phone.

“What about?”

Nana’s asking her a question. Don’t zone out again.

Mom’s still distracted by her phone. Don’t get frustrated. Pretend she’s Mary-Beth, distracting herself with one of her books.

“Can’t remember, honestly.” pray she's talking right - have her speech patterns changed? Don’t say y’all. “Just know it was weird.”

“Did I tell you about when I worked for Pixar?”

Papa interrupts. She missed him a lot. Forgot how much it hurt to see his mind going. See a lot of Uncle in him. Remember seeing Bill’s mind going in the end.

Remember Bill rambling when he was drunk, saying he was afraid of losing his mind like his Pa, remember him in the beginning of the first game having done so.

Nearly spit out her eggs. Realize everything’s going to taste different. Preservatives, spices. Different cooking methods. The eggs she’d eaten rarely had been from the hens they’d kept in camp. These had been frozen, shipped from farms across the states. Boiled and scrambled and salted and peppered.

She forces herself not to gag, clenches her fist around her fork. Struggles against the strong taste and forces them down.

Forgets that food isn’t scarce anymore.

Listens to Papa’s story.

Mom doesn’t talk at all.

  
  


Get up, get laughed at when she goes to wash her dishes by hand.

Forget dishwashers are a thing again.

Smile - pray it looks natural - walk back to her room.

Put her head between her knees and gasp for air.

  
  


Life is so different, and she struggles.

Things come naturally to her after a day or so. It’s as though she never Went, and it scares her. Will she forget? Forget those _horrible_ things she did, those things she can never forgive herself for? Forget the people she still considers family, despite what they did?

She sits on her bed, sometimes. Stares at her phone, finds herself lost in thought. Can she hate them? Hate Bill, for snarling at her and saying those _horrible_ things, for aiming a gun at her? Hate Javier for turning against her? Hate Dutch for shooting her, for killing her even though it may not have been his bullet that dropped her dead?

Or is it Rockstar she should blame? It was they who created them, they who made their fate. They who coded them, gave them their personalities, their histories and their fates. It was Rockstar who decided that Micah would be a monster, that Dutch would lose his way and turn them all into collateral damage.

And she’d spiral, would struggle for breath and claw at her arms until her cat cried and climbed in her lap and let her clutch at her until she grounded herself again.

Sometimes she hated them, despised Bill and Javier and Dutch and Micah, sometimes it was Rockstar she hated. And sometimes she felt awful for them - for Bill, whose mind goes. For Javier, whose world crumbled around him. For Dutch, who struggled to carry twenty-odd people in a shrinking world and suffered a brain injury. And others… and others, all three.

More often than not, she despised herself for failing, for watching them all march to the game’s end and being unable to do anything to stop them.

  
  


Always, she had to put a smile on her face. How could she say “Oh, I had a dream and now I’m having breakdowns” without looking the fool? Already, she was struggling to fit back in. Her words were slipping back to normal - she’d tried to force herself to talk as she had towards the end, and it had been hard, and an attempt to throw a rock and knock a bottle off a fence had missed by a mile.

It’s as though she’d never Gone, and she’s scared. She’s falling apart and even her cat won’t listen, struggles against her arms once she’s caught her breath and flees.

  
  


One night, she wakes up screaming.

She’d fallen asleep early - that was something that _hadn’t_ changed, she’d taken to sleeping and waking early. Had dreamed of a man whose life she’d choked out of him, taken to the ground and strangled 'til he died. His eyes had bulged, and she’d watched as the veins in his eyes had popped, hadn’t let go for minutes after he stopped moving to make sure he was good and dead.

His crime was that he’d recognized them from Blackwater, and nothing else. She’d not had her gun on her, her knife needed to be sharpened, and so she’d used her hands. He’d refused to fight back, as she was young and a woman, and he’d died for it.

  
  


Nana had found her in the kitchen, staring at the coffee pot.

She’d never cared for coffee Before, gagged on the taste of it, and opted for soda for her caffeine fix, and then energy drinks once she’d developed a taste for them. But sodas were rare and expensive (and contained actual cocaine, and she refused to even chew cocaine gum) in the 1800’s, so she’d taken to drinking coffee. She’d ‘decided to try’ coffee after coming back, only to spit it out to everyone’s great amusement - it tasted very different, was far too smooth, lacking the grounds she’d grown used to, and refused to try it since.

But she couldn’t sleep, and wanted some sort of familiarity and something to settle her nerves. God, but she’d give anything for the tea Hosea made (oh, _Hosea)_ or the coffee that Susan would make (she missed her dearly, the woman was harsh but reminded her almost of her Nana, had kept her sane), even Pearson’s stew (as disgusting as it was, she’d grown used to it and it was _home)._ But she didn’t know how to make any of them, and didn’t have the ingredients even if she did.

Her grandmother had made tea (iced sweet tea, of course, none of that _hot tea_ that some people like, don’t be blasphemous! but what Hosea used to make was hot tea and oh but she missed it) and pressed it into her hands, and she’d wrinkled her nose but drank it anyways, sitting with the old woman until, finally, she’d blurted out “I had a nightmare.”

and Nana hadn’t said anything, instead sipped at her tea, waiting for her to talk on her own time.

“It… it was a really long nightmare.”

Nana drank her tea.

“I dreamt I was Arthur. From… from Red Dead.”

Of course Nana knew who that was. Nana had been the one to introduce her to video games as a child, had watched her play Red Dead 2 (had bought it for her, in fact) and then the first one, had actually asked her to replay it not long before she’d woken up in the fields of West Elizabeth.

“I dreamt that… that I did _everything_ he did. That I… I murdered and killed. Killed a lot of people, some of them with my bare hands. From… from Colter all the way 'til the end.”

Nana’s face went sad, and she put a knobby hand atop of Jen's.

“Would… if… if I _did_ , if I did do those things… would you hate me?”

Nana frowned and shook her head, squeezed her hand. “Never. I could _never_ hate you. When you were growing up, remember what I said? No matter what you do, I’ll always love you. If you murder someone, I’ll help you hide the body.”

And she couldn’t help but to give a watery giggle, “That’d be an awful lot of bodies.”

Nana nodded, “Then I’d have to dig an awful lot of graves.” and she must have seen the look on her face, because she leaned forward and pulled her into a hug. “No matter what you do,” she squeezed her, held her tight, “I will _always_ love you.”

and _god_ but she hoped that was true.


End file.
